Reception Issues
by anotherfngrl
Summary: The cell towers are down in London.  Sherlock gets... creative when he wants to talk to John.


The situation is rapidly approaching unbearable. John has been at work for two hours, and Sherlock has been unable to contact him during that time.

When John didn't answer Sherlock's 74th text, he began to worry that something was legitimately wrong, as opposed to John just getting distracted by all those blasted sick people who seemed to fascinate him. So he texted Lestrade. Twenty three times. Lestrade didn't answer.

A text to Mycroft and one to his assistant also went unanswered, and Sherlock had a brief moment of fear that this was like one of those strange movies where you wake up and the whole world is gone. Not that most of the population vanishing would be a problem, but Sherlock would miss John. And Mrs. Hudson. And probably Lestrade and Mycroft as well, eventually.

In order to convince himself that his (ridiculously childish) imaginings were pure fancy, he yelled for Mrs. Hudson. She appeared moments later, bringing him tea, "Just this once, because I'm not your housekeeper, but all that shouting can't have been good for your throat dear," and mentioning that a massive electrical failure had caused all of the cell towers in London to mysteriously stop working.

Sherlock tried the internet next. He emailed John, commented on his blog, wrote a post on his own blog imploring John to contact him. (It was a rather short post reading simply: John. Now. But Sherlock was sure his friend would understand the message.) Unfortunately, John seemed to be away from his computer at the moment.

Sherlock carefully considered his next method. Phones were out, as were computers, but every doctor's office he'd ever been to had had TVs playing in the lobby and sometimes even the patient rooms. If Sherlock could get a message out on TV, he might be able to get John's attention.

Unable to text his brother, Sherlock merely walked down to the bank on the corner, looked up at the security camera, and said, "Mycroft, a word?" Five minutes later, Mycroft's assistant was picking him up. Sherlock didn't think he'd ever seen the woman less at ease. She might be the only person he'd ever met who relied on her phone more than he did. They shared a mutual wince as they acknowledged their horrible fate, but other than that the car ride was silent, without the usual quiet typing that accompanied their interactions.

It was surprisingly easy to convince Mycroft to let Sherlock appear on the news. Within half an hour, the elder Holmes had found his brother an important case dealing with a missing briefcase containing national secrets. Ten minutes after Sherlock arrived at the crime scene, news reporters from all of the local channels were swarming the building, trying to get an interview with the enigmatic detective.

For once, Sherlock acquiesced to speak to them, although he said only, "It is most urgent that I speak to Dr. John Watson immediately." The reporters were more confused by the fact that Sherlock had addressed them than they were by the total non sequitur of his message, which amused Sherlock only briefly.

An hour later, the case was solved, the briefcase was returned, and Sherlock still hadn't heard from John. Frustrated beyond belief, he ordered Mycroft's driver to take him to the main London cell tower. The engineers and technicians were understandably startled at his interference, but they quickly backed off and let him work.

It was a matter of minutes to reroute past the problem and get the tower back online. And when the main tower was repaired, the others rebooted automatically. Sherlock had rarely seen a sweeter sight than those four little bars at the top of his phone.

He was just about to text John when one of the tower's security guards escorted a scruffy looking man into the room. "He insisted on speaking with you, sir," the guard explained, leaving Sherlock and the unkept stranger alone.

"I got 'im for you!" the strange man enthused immediately.

"Got who?" Sherlock asked distractedly, logging into his messenger. He assumed the man was a friend of one of the members of his homeless network, and and had found one of the people Sherlock asked them to keep their eyes out for in relation to various cold cases Lestrade was working on.

"That Dr. Watson fellow. Me and the boys grabbed him from that clinic- like pickin' candy off a babe, it was so easy. He's waiting at our warehouse. I gotta tell you, Mr. Holmes, he doesn't look like no super spy to me, but the boys have him tied up just in case. He won't be trying anything till you get there to question him."

"You've tied John up? You think he's got something to do with the briefcase?" Sherlock yelled, drawing himself up to his full height and getting in the man's face in his fury.

"Well yes," the fellow said, rather stupidly. "The reporter said you were investigating, and then you said you needed to talk to him, and she said he might be your best lead to find the briefcase. I'm a national hero!"

"You're a lout and a lunatic. Take me to John, immediately," Sherlock said sharply.

"Of course. Come with me," the strange, unkept man said, and Sherlock found himself being brought to an old warehouse, in the abandoned part of town that had once been industrial.

The first thing Sherlock did when he saw John was demand that they, "Release him at once!" The two men who had been left to guard him complied, and all three looked at Sherlock in confusion.

Realizing he needed an explanation for who John was that ididn't/i make him out to be a criminal, Sherlock sighed. "Dr. Watson is my partner. He was unavoidably detained this morning. The clip you saw was me explaining to the press that I would work much faster with my partner at my side. I thank you for restoring him to me, and assure you the matter has already been solved. The country's secrets are safe, yet again."

"Anything for you, Mr. Sherlock," the leader of the men, the one who'd fetched him earlier, said happily.

Sherlock gave them each a twenty pound note for their trouble and led a still shocked John out to the street, where they quickly found a cab. "You must shower immediately. You smell revolting," Sherlock informed his roommate.

"You had me kidnapped. I'm sorry I'm not my usual rose scented self," John griped.

"You never smell of roses. Your scent is a mix of almost antiseptic clean, wool, and, rather incongruously, pipe tobacco," Sherlock tells him offhandedly.

"You. Had. Me. Kidnapped," John repeats, as if Sherlock might have failed to hear him the first time.

"I did not. I merely tried to get your attention through mass media when personal communication failed. It is not my fault that someone else, hearing a message intended for you, misinterpreted it," Sherlock said lazily as they pulled up to their flat. "If you'd checked your email or either of our blogs, this whole mess could have been avoided."

John merely raised his eyes heavenward and sighed as he strode purposefully toward their door, leaving Sherlock to pay the cab driver. When Sherlock caught up with John, the other man was already in the flat and headed determinedly toward the shower. Undeterred, Sherlock followed his friend into the bathroom, ignoring John's glare and perching on the counter as the smaller man stripped off his clothes and stepped into the warm water.

"If you're going to hang about staring, at least bring me some clean clothes. Those smell like kidnapper," John demanded from the shower cubicle. Sherlock obeyed, taking advantage of the order to bring John a dark blue jumper he particularly liked on his friend instead of one of the tan ones. John was finished in the shower by the time Sherlock returned, standing in the bathroom with a towel around his waist. He took the clothes from Sherlock without comment and slammed the door in his friend's face.

Knowing he'd been dismissed, Sherlock returned to the living room, perturbed. He'd spent all day trying to get John's attention, and now that they were home the other man was ignoring him. When John took up his usual spot in the armchair a few minutes later, Sherlock had worked himself into a thorough sulk.

John was uncaring of his roommate's obvious bad mood. "So explain to me how exactly you wound up accidentally making an appeal for my kidnapping?" the doctor asked annoyedly.

Sherlock explained the whole day. The text messages, his brief panic, Mycroft's help, and even his eventual solving of the issue with the towers. When he finished, John was just staring at him, seemingly beyond words.

Eventually, the doctor managed to close his mouth and stop gaping. "What did you need to tell me, anyway?" he asked after a moment.

"Nothing in particular," Sherlock answered, and John groaned.

"Tea. I need tea," the smaller man said, making his way into the kitchen.

"Oh, I was going to ask you to pick up some milk on your way home," Sherlock remembered. He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard John cursing him from the next room.


End file.
